News:

"There is a terrible desperation to the increasingly pathetic rationalizations from the climate denial camp. This comes as no surprise if you take the long view; every single undone paradigm in history has died kicking and screaming, and our current petroleum paradigm 🐉🦕🦖 is no different. The trick here is trying to figure out how we all make it to the new ⚡ paradigm without dying ☠️ right along with the old one, kicking, screaming or otherwise." - William Rivers Pitt

I just took this quiz and did pretty well with it. This quiz is valuable because is shows how little the average American actually knows about why these wars happen and who gets killed in them. What I got right has a "✔" and what I got wrong has a red asterisk *. The correct answer(s) are in bold.

Quiz: Beyond War 🕊

What tends to be present where war is? (Check all that apply.)

a) resource scarcity

b) human rights violations in need of response

c) raw fossil fuels ✔

d) Islam * (I picked this one too and should not have )

See documentation of c here.

See documentation of not a here.

B and D are non-plausible propaganda.

Nations are more likely to wage war if . . . (Check all that apply.) [THIS QUESTION NOT USED IN FACEBOOK VERSION DUE TO HAVING MULTIPLE ANSWERS]

a) they have militaries * (I didn't pick this one )

b) they spend more than other nations on their militaries ✔

c) their people accept that war is a legitimate tool of public policy ✔

d) theyíre great

See documentation of c here.

See evidence for a and b here.

The United States sells weapons to this percentage of the worldís dictatorships.

a) 0%

b) 12%

c) 52%

d) 73% ✔

See documentation of d here.

The majority of those killed in modern wars are . . .

a) members of a military

b) terrorists

c) evil demons

d) civilians ✔

Itís not even close. Some examples are here.

The majority of those killed with missiles from drones have been . . .

a) criminals

b) terrorists

c) suspect profiled individuals

d) unidentified ✔

See documentation of d here.

What percentage of suicide terrorist attacks are aimed at getting a military to cease occupying a foreign country?

a) 4%

b) 27%

c) 39%

d) 95% ✔

See documentation of d here.

What percentage of military bases on foreign soil are U.S. military bases?

a) 49%

b) 68%

c) 81%

d) 96% ✔

See documentation of d here.

What percentage of global military spending could end starvation globally?

a) 1.5%

b) 3% *

c) 18%

d) 62%

See documentation of a here.

What percentage of the top 4 weapons dealers in the world are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council?

a) 0%

b) 25%

c) 50%

d) 100% ✔

They are the United States, Russia, China, France. The U.K. does not always clearly hold fifth place, though it is always in the top 6 or 7. See documentation of d here.

People have signed World BEYOND Warís pledge to help end all war in how many countries?

Ivan Duque, who is the candidate of former president Alvaro Uribe, won a solid victory for Colombiaís presidency and will probably take Colombia back towards civil war and internal repression, with the help of the US and other conservative governments, argues Manuel Rozental, of PueblosEnCamino.org

Quote

Manuel Rozental

Emmanuel Rozental is a Colombian activist, physician, and practicing surgeon with more than 40 yearsí involvement in grassroots political organizing with youth, indigenous peoples, and urban and rural movements. He has been exiled several times to Canada for political activities. Academic in social and political sciences, strategist with social movements throughout the Americas and beyond.

So our fear is now that Colombia is the spearhead of the U.S. policy for this continent. And the U.S. policy for this continent in economic terms is this: war actually is not a means to an end. The resources and territories that are needed are not only a means to an end. War is the end in itself.

The Middle Eastern wars have activated the economy and have improved the economy in the U.S. [Inaudible] that Colombiaís role is one of the Israel of Latin America. And what comes here is a model and a new phase, neoliberalism is left behind.

The new phase such as Colombia and Mexico for capital from the U.S., and pushed by, promoted by U.S. corporations and the Pentagon, is actually a, letís call it a mafia-type capitalism which is, on the one hand, drug trafficking and drug mafias together with governments and corporations, and launching all types of wars constantly.

I am not trying to generate fear. Iím just showing the type of movements weíre seeing developing here.

Aleksandr Buzgalin is a Professor of Political Economy at Moscow State University. He is also editor of the independent democratic left magazine Alternatives, and is a coordinator of the Russian social movement Alternatives, author of more then 20 books and hundreds of articles, translated into English, German and many other languages.

Aleksandr Buzgalin is a Professor of Political Economy at Moscow State University. He is also editor of the independent democratic left magazine Alternatives, and is a coordinator of the Russian social movement Alternatives, author of more then 20 books and hundreds of articles, translated into English, German and many other languages.

The little known Congressional Progressive Caucus🕊 is the largest caucus within the Democratic Party and has an important track record in calling attention to the highly interventionist and harmful foreign policy of the US, says CEPRís Mark Weisbrot

As president Trump concluded his participation in a NATO summit this week, he called for a doubling of NATO membersí military spending, from a target of 2 percent of GDP by 2024, to 4 percent of GDP. In effect, Trump is proposing even greater militarization of world affairs, both at home and within NATO.There are, however, members of Congress who have recently been pushing back against the militarization and interventionism of US foreign policy. People such as Representatives Ro Khanna, Mark Pocan, Keith Ellison, Raul Grijalva, Barbara Lee, among many others. They are all members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, or CPC. This caucus is generally not that well known, but with 78 members, ( including Bernie Sanders in the Senate) it is the largest Democratic Party caucus. It was founded in 1991 and has grown steadily in size since then. It takes positions on both foreign and domestic policy that tend to be significantly to the left of the party as a whole.Joining me to discuss the foreign policy work of Congressional Progressive Caucus and its individual members is Mark Weisbrot. Mark is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and is the author of the book, ďFailed: What the ĎExpertsí Got Wrong About the Global Economy.Ē Thanks for joining us again, Mark.

MARK WEISBROT: Thanks, Sharmini, and thanks for doing this show. I think itís a very important institution that hasnít really gotten much attention.

SHARMINI PERIES: Thanks for that endorsement, Mark. Letís start off by defining the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Who are they?

MARK WEISBROT: Yes. Well, itís 70, around 76-77 members of Congress, all from the House except, as you mentioned, Bernie Sanders in the Senate. And they were formed to provide something of an alternative to a lot of the policies, both domestic and foreign policy, of some of the leadership of the Democratic Party, and turn it to the left of that.

SHARMINI PERIES: And Mark, what are the kinds of things that they are engaged in, and their past policy positions that are significant?

MARK WEISBROT: Well, theyíve taken a lot of positions on domestic issues that were always ahead, you know, on the budget, the monetary policy, the Federal Reserve and fiscal policy. What I think is most striking now, because weíre in a period where most of the foreign policy discussion is kind of retrograde, you know, even by U.S. foreign policy discussion standards, and theyíve taken consistently progressive positions on a whole variety of foreign policy issues. And I think thatís really important to see that there is this pull, because, you know, otherwise you could be really discouraged where you look. You know, you turn on the television and you look in the newspapers here, and all the debates are about various enemies around the world. And even, and you have this special period now where I think, because so much of the leadership and a significant part of the base of the Democratic Party, which would normally be taking a less-hawkish position on foreign policy, has become the more aggressive and interventionist part-.

SHARMINI PERIES: Mark, the Caucus has taken some really important positions that weíve covered here at The Real News, like that of Yemen, and Brazil, and Syria. Give us some of those policy positions that-. You have actually worked on some of them, on the Hill.

MARK WEISBROT: Yes. Well, the issue of Yemen and the war in Yemen led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and supported militarily by the U.S., you know, in terms of refueling Saudi planes and selecting targets. And this is an actual participation of the United States in the war, and itís unconstitutional. Itís against the law. You know, Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution reserves to Congress the power to decide on U.S. military intervention. It isnít just declaring war, as you might, as some people read it. It actually, if you look at the legislative history, it really is any kind of military or paramilitary intervention, for that matter. Thatís what the framers of the Constitution were describing when they put that in.

And so the Congress has that power, and it just hasnít asserted it enough. This is the law of the land. And so this war is unauthorized and illegalunder the Constitution. So what the Progressive Caucus and various members of the Progressive Caucus did in November of last year is they invoked the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which didnít, you know, reinterpret the Constitution, but gave the Congress another way, a procedural way, of enforcing the constitutional power that they have. So it said that they could any member of Congress, when the U.S. was involved in hostilities overseas without the authorization of Congress, they could actually demand a debate and vote on that military involvement, and that the leadership of the House couldnít block it. And so thatís what they did. And in the House there was some negotiation, but a resolution did pass. And it didnít say that the U.S. had to withdraw, but it did recognize that the participation of the United States in this war was unauthorized.

And then they came back to the Senate in February. And it was a resolution-. By the way, these resolutions were sponsored not only by progressive members of Congress and Bernie Sanders in the Senate, but also by more conservative legislators who just believe in the Constitution, like Mike Lee of Utah in the Senate, and in the House there was Walter Jones and Thomas Massie. And so in the Senate, that vote was defeated, but they got, they got 44 votes for it. And it was the first time that the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which came out of the Vietnam War, was used to force that vote.

And I think this is very important for several reasons. First of all for this war, because this is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. You have a million people who have gotten cholera from the destruction of water supplies in the bombing. And you had thousands of people die from that. And you have 8 million people on the brink of starvation. And so this isnít over. And in fact, thereís negotiations going on right now with a U.N. envoy, and thereís some hope that there actually will be a settlement. And some more conservative members of Congress like Steny Hoyer and Eliot Engle, more conservative Democrats, they have even moved, and said to the Saudis in a letter recently that, you know, this is enough, and this has to stop, and you should negotiate a solution. And thatís because of this effort, because they use this power that the Congress has always had, but not used, to actually, you know, stop the, to try and stop this U.S. intervention. And they know, these other legislators know that this actually can be done. They can keep coming back with this, and theyíre going to. Theyíre going to come back, and they can get a vote.

And the final thing Iíll say about this, because I think itís so important, is itís a structural change that the Progressive Caucus and people like Ro Khanna, Rep. Ro Khanna from Silicon Valley in California, that are leading this effort. Mark Polkan from the Progressive, co-chair of the Progressive Caucus. This, if they continue this, down this path, which Iím very certain they will, this will be a structural change. Because this will now, if you look at the whole history of the United States, there are very few wars where the Congress was leading the charge. Itís, you know-. So this will help prevent a lot of wars in the future as the Congress reasserts its constitutional authority. So thatís very, very big.

SHARMINI PERIES: Now, Mark, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, or CPC, as itís known, is currently the largest Democratic Party caucus with 78 members, which includes Bernie Sanders from Senate. Now, however, only about-. This only constitutes 15 percent of all the 535 members of the House and Senate. Now, given the size, just how much impact can they have, how effective can they possibly be?

MARK WEISBROT: Well, the example I gave was very important because theyíre changing the rules of the game. Theyíre actually, theyíre just enforcing the rules of the game, and therefore changing, changing them. But also on other issues they have a voice where nobody can really push back against. And so when it gets in the news and it gets in the news in other countries-. So for example, thereís a letter circulating in Congress now from progressive members on Brazil, because of, you know, in Brazil theyíve got the leading presidential candidate, former President Lula da Silva is in jail right now. And itís become more and more obvious that this is because, not because he committed a crime for which they did not present material evidence at his trial, but also, but really because heís the leading candidate and he would win in October. And you know, you get very little real information about this in the news. But these kind of letters, they make the news. If the reporters ignore them here, which they donít always, they make the news in Brazil. So they have an influence there, and it shows that there is this force that really is, is pushing for a different foreign policy.

And theyíve had similar letters, you know, for other countries, as well. A number of letters on Honduras, for example, when they, with the help of the United States and support of the United States, the Honduran government stole the election in November, and they came out with letters and statements about that. If you look at the election of AMLO in Mexico that just happened, the statement on that was very positive, and it went against the, all the punditry and the most of the media coverage by agreeing with AMLO on his foreign policy, where he wants a more peaceful and non-interventionist foreign policy in the hemisphere. In other words, theyíre not going to support like they did, theyíre not going to support the United States like they did in the Honduran election, where they came out in favor of recognizing their election, then the U.S. pretended to follow them, after the U.S. had already asked them, the U.S. government had already asked them to do that.

Now, those are the kind of things that theyíre not going to do. And the Progressive Caucus will be supporting them while everybody, you read all the opinion leaders in the newspaper are worried, and saying bad things about AMLO, because heís not lining up with U.S. foreign policy in the hemisphere. And I think what they can do is provide a progressive vision, but not just a vision like an intellectual or a professor can do, but a vision that theyíre actively implementing. So itís far outsized in relation to its percentage of the Congress, because this is, after all, these are positions that the vast majority of Americans would agree with and do agree with, and theyíre not represented because of the hegemony of this foreign policy establishment, which includes the government and the media. And this is especially true in Latin America where you see almost no dissent at all, so itís almost monolithic.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Mark. Now, to tie all of this back to my introduction, which was about Trumpís presence at NATO, and calling for more spending on the part of NATO members, just a few weeks ago the U.S. House passed the 2019 Defense Authorization Bill, allocating $717 billion to the Pentagon. What is the Congressional Progressive Caucusí position regarding military spending, particularly given just yesterday the House actually reinstated their commitment to NATO?

MARK WEISBROT: Well, the caucus members, I mean, the people that are leading this effort, especially in the Progressive Caucus, are definitely for less military spending. Bernie Sanders has, of course, said this publicly, but also Ro Khanna and other members of the Progressive Caucus. So theyíre definitely on the record on this issue, and they are also against, you know, what a lot of the military spending is used for, which is regime change. And thatís a very important position that theyíve taken, as well. Even in Venezuela, for example, where you donít have any, very little dissent at all against the regime change effort that is currently underway led by the U.S. government. You have opposition, again, from the Progressive Caucus.

So yeah, theyíre presenting a consistent view of a positive foreign policy. Itís not isolationist, but itís against the destructive things that our foreign policy is doing around the world.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Mark. Great discussion. I thank you so much for joining us today.

MARK WEISBROT: Thank you.

SHARMINI PERIES: And thank you for joining us here on The Real News Network.

Logged

Leges Sine Moribus VanaeFaith, if it has not works, is dead, being alone.

ďI Returned from Vacation to Find the Soviet Union had CollapsedĒ Ė RAI with A. Buzgalin (5/12)

July 16, 2018

On Reality Asserts Itself, Prof. Alexander Buzgalin says that he returned from a vacation in the countryside to find Gorbachev was arrested, Yeltsin was leader and the Soviet Union was no more Ė with host Paul Jay

Aleksandr Buzgalin is a Professor of Political Economy at Moscow State University. He is also editor of the independent democratic left magazine Alternatives, and is a coordinator of the Russian social movement Alternatives, author of more then 20 books and hundreds of articles, translated into English, German and many other languages.

PAUL JAY: I should say, weíre in New York City, this is not our normal studio. One more time, Professor Buzgalin teaches political economy and is Director of the Center for Modern Marxist Studies at Moscow State University. So, we got ourselves up to- youíre now on the Central Committee in your early thirties-

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: And the Soviet Union is nearly collapsed.

PAUL JAY: And theyíre blaming you for it. Well, they certainly did blame Gorbachev for it, and weíre talking about, you were saying that thereís a rise within the party and within the party leadership of people who want to get rich, who had kind of given up on the socialist ideals. I guess they either decided it isnít working or didnít matter because they want to get rich. And while the internal factors may have been the most important, the Americans are very active in all this. Their dream is to bring down the Soviet Union. Talk about that period, and you have a very unique viewpoint, being on the Central Committee.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: So, first of all, it was really an extremely contradictory situation, because from one hand, we had the growth of social creativity from below. We had the first attempts to build self-management in the enterprises. And the most that did it were people in big scientific production complexes. We had, in Soviet Union, like corporations, where we had research centers, production, social infrastructure, and so on. And typically, these groups, these classic corporations, had very skilled people and they had big intentions. And it was all Soviet Union council of workerís collectives. A very interesting structure. And the last Congress, with one thousand delegates, where they participated, was very strong and important. And itís not a well-known part of the story of the Soviet Union.

We had good interest in initiative of the young generation to build, on a cooperative basis, new houses for the life. It was very interesting initiatives in the Green Movement, which appeared from below, and so on and so forth. At the same time, from another hand, we had terrible growth of contradictions because criminal business, which existed in Soviet Union, became stronger because of the whole destruction of the institutional system. Weak institutions led to the growth of shadow economy and criminal business. A lot of former directors of state enterprises were waiting, that it will be privatization, and were trying to steal as much as possible of the resources.

PAUL JAY: This is before-

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Just before collapse of the Soviet Union.

PAUL JAY: People see it coming. Whatís Gorbachev doing about this? Or does he want this to-

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Yeah, and- he was talking. And this is one of the problems. You know, there is this definition of revolutionary situation by Lenin, and he wrote very important things. Revolution came when those who are on the top cannot be rulers more, according to the old model. So, this is a crisis of the top. And we had crisis.

PAUL JAY: Not fit to rule.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Yeah, not fit to rule. And people were trying to find another solution. And what was important, we had a lot of myths created with assistance of the West, but not by the West. One of them was a myth about market. And market, for majority of Soviet people, was associated with supermarket, with a lot of commodities. It was the strikes of the miners, a very interesting initiative from below, who wanted to change the situation. I participated in the Congress and the leader of the minerís strike said, ďWe want to have capitalism, the factories will belong to the workers and not the Party and nomenklatura. We want to have capitalism, where we will have resources to buy whatever we want. We want to have capitalism, where everybody will have good apartments, and it will be no privileges of people who are rulers. We want to have capitalism where workers will decide what to do.Ē

PAUL JAY: They want to have capitalism without capitalists.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Yeah, without capitalists, without unemployment, without social stratification, and so on. It was an illusion. And unfortunately, it was created by many contradictions inside Soviet Union, which we discussed before. And main contradiction was interconnected with concentration of the power in the hands of bureaucracy, and the money of social creativity of the masses, and attempts to build consumer society, conformist society. Socialism cannot be conformist, consumer society. Socialism must move in the direction of self-organization, social creativity, anti-conformism, if you want. It should be disalienation, but not conservation of alienation in consumerist form. Iím sorry for this professorís language, but I cannot express this in any other terms. So, thatís why we had internal contradictions as main factor of self-destruction of this system. And we had chances for the changes, but here, a subjective factor could play a decisive role.

PAUL JAY: How do you get to a point, after years of bureaucratization- but something new enters the picture, because itís not just bureaucratized, some mutation, of socialism. Now, people want to get rich and now people within the Party leadership and sections of the enterprises, within the elite, people have said enough, now we just want to cash in. How do you get to that?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: You already gave the answer, so I can say yes, you are right. And it was predictable. In the beginning of the Soviet Union, in writings of different people, from Mensheviks to Leon Trotsky, was made prognosis that if bureaucracy will have more and more power, and the control from below will be weak, social creativity will go down, the transformation of bureaucracy will be inevitable. They will have intention to transform themselves into the class of private owners who has both political power and economic power and no limitations, no frameworks.

Because even in bureaucratic period, in Brezhnev period of the Soviet Union, officials at the top had relatively small privileges. They had a lot of limits for their power and they had strong rules of the game. And so, the new generation who came, they wanted to have the same living standards as billionaires, as presidents and leaders of bourgeois countries. And that was main reason. Plus, as I said, decline, degradation of social creativity, led to the consumerism and conformism of majority of Soviet people. And conformism creates atmosphere where market system, capitalist system, is coming. Itís like a swamp where itís impossible to have beautiful trees, where there will be only dirty grass and frogs.

PAUL JAY: So, talk about that period, the rise of Yeltsin and the last days of the Soviet Union.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: So, still this is a big question mark. What happens, why we had this artificial coup díťtat, what was the role of Gorbachev, who was behind? I am not a person who has secret information, so I will not give special commands.

PAUL JAY: And weíre in 1991?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: It was August, 1991.

PAUL JAY: Where are you, what are you doing?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: I was in the vacation, so unfortunately, I could not participate in this process. I was in the countryside, in the forest, just to relax a little bit. It was my mistake. I didnít think that it will be so quickly-

PAUL JAY: So, most of our audience doesnít really know this story at all.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: So, in August, leaders of KGB and some other officials from the top said that Gorbachev is no more president of the Soviet Union. We have a special committee in emergency situations, and Gorbachev was formally arrested in his dacha in Crimea, where he was also on a rest. But then, they did nothing.

PAUL JAY: So, itís essentially a coup.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: It was coup, but leaders of the military coup must arrest the opposition, after all. But they did nothing. Yeltsin came to the house where there was Parliament of Russian Federation, people were walking in the streets with protests.

PAUL JAY: And who is Yeltsin, why all of a sudden, Yeltsin? Whatís the power behind Yeltsin?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Okay, so thatís another story. One year ago, he was elected as president of Russian Federation inside Soviet Union. Soviet Union had like states in the U.S., but with more powerful structure. It was republics, fifteen republics, and Russia was the biggest and in the center. And Yeltsin was elected as president of Russia. So, informally, he has not too big power, because republics inside Federation were not so powerful as central government. But when Gorbachev was arrested, Yeltsin became in Moscow a key person, according to official status. And all opposition came to Yeltsin to protect against coup. And it was both really democratic forces and pro-bourgeois, quasi-democratic forces.

PAUL JAY: To protect against a coup from whom?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: To protect Yeltsin against those who organized the coup díťtat. KGB leaders organized-

PAUL JAY: To protect Yeltsin from the KGB?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: From the KGB, yes.

PAUL JAY: What did the KGB want?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: KGB wanted to stop transformation led by Gorbachev to rebuild Soviet Union. Itís also important to say that in Caucasus and in Baltic states, republics in that period, was growth of nationalism and ideas to become separate states, not states in the Soviet Union. So, the idea was, ďwe will use military force, we will keep Soviet Union, and all Gorbachev experiments, we will stop.Ē They said, ďwe will keep freedom of speech, but with limitations,Ē these organizers of the coup, ďwe will continue some market reforms.Ē

PAUL JAY: And this was mostly driven out of the KGB?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Some military leaders and a few people from- top officials from the Central Committee.

PAUL JAY: And they want to try to retain whatís left of the Soviet state.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Yeah.

PAUL JAY: Yeltsin represents these ďletís get richĒ factions inside.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Yeah, but these guys did nothing. They didnít arrest Yeltsin.

PAUL JAY: Why? KGB knows how to arrest people.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Yes, but they did nothing. There are different explanations. Again, I cannot explain this phenomenon, myself. One of the explanations was that Gorbachev decided to play a role of the person who is not responsible for this, and then came to power again with the assistance of the KGB, simply to beat Yeltsin, who became leader of opposition in that period. Another explanation was that they did not have a final agreement of what has to be done, these leaders of the coup. But really, nobody knows. Itís a very strange story, very strange.

PAUL JAY: So, this famous photograph and videos of Yeltsin on the tanks, what is that, then, what goes on there?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Yes, it was a few tanks and some soldiers in Moscow. But they did nothing. They were standing in the streets and did nothing. And the two guys who were killed-

PAUL JAY: This is outside the parliament buildings?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Outside, yes. And two guys who were dead, officially, because tanks killed them- really nobody knows what happened in reality- but I think the tanks were going back from Moscow and they accidentally were- because it was crowded, and when they decided to move from the square, two persons were really killed. And then they were transformed into heroes.

PAUL JAY: So, the section of the KGB and army that arrested Gorbachev, they allowed Yeltsin to come to power. Why? Did they say, okay, we might as well get rich too?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Really, I donít have an explanation, as I said. For me, this is still a big question mark, whatís happened. No idea. Only what I can say is itís a total crisis of the power. And the only person who was decisive and aggressive was Yeltsin.

PAUL JAY: Youíre on the Central Committee. Do they have an emergency meeting, or the Party just starts to fall apart?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: I didnít have time to come back from this village. Itís Russia, itís not so simple, even for a member of the Central Committee. When I was back, all was solved. And the Party also was paralyzed. It was total paralysis of legislative and executive organs. It was self-destruction of the elite.

PAUL JAY: So, youíre sitting in your cottage, on vacation- this is what, is it playing out for you on T.V.? I mean, do you know whatís going on?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: First of all, I didnít have any information. On T.V., it was on barely. The whole time only barely and nothing else. When I received- telephone was not working. It was a real village, and it was one telephone three kilometers from this place. So, when I found this telephone, I could not reach anybody in Moscow. So, after one day, I went to the regional center and received, more or less, information. But when I was back in Moscow, it was nothing.

PAUL JAY: Were you surprised or expecting it?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: No, I was very surprised, of course. And I was afraid that something like that can happen, but not coup. I was afraid that it will be coup organized by republican leaders, Yeltsin and leaders of the Baltic Republics, Caucasus Republics, and so on.

PAUL JAY: And you donít think the KGB was actually in cahoots with Yeltsin?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: I donít think so. I think what was real- the only hypothesis which I can propose is the following; it was informal, indirect, not final agreement with Gorbachev, and Gorbachev, it was his personal problem. He was not decisive. He could not make exact decisions, he was changing decisions very often. And he doesnít know what has to be done. And he was a very weak leader, and for such periods, itís necessary to have a strong leader, because personality, in the period of revolution, plays a big role, bigger than usual. In a stable system, personality is not important, or nearly not important. In the period of revolutions, strong personality and strong political organization is very important if this personality is on the top.

PAUL JAY: Well, in the next segment, weíll pick up. You come back from vacation, and itís not the Soviet Union, itís Russia.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Yeah, the Soviet Union is absent, the Communist Party is absent, and the whole situation is completely new, yes.

PAUL JAY: All right, so join us for the next segment of our interview with Professor Buzgalin on The Real News Network.

On Reality Asserts Itself, Prof. Alexandr Buzgalin says while Putin heads a powerful state, this is not a system of one man rule; more than 100 billionaires and a stratum of top bureaucrats have political power Ė with host Paul Jay

PAUL JAY: Welcome to the Real News Network, welcome to Reality Asserts Itself, Iím Paul Jay. As you can see, weíre continuing our discussion in a new studio, but weíre still in New York City with Dr. Alexander Buzgalin.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Thank you.

PAUL JAY: Professor Buzgalin teaches political economy and is director of the Center for Modern Marxist Studies at Moscow State University. So, weíre going to pick up where we left off. You go on vacation for a lovely little August and you get away from it all, and you come back, youíre on the central committee, youngest member, I guess, maybe in history, I donít know, of the communist party. Youíre amongst the most powerful people in the county. And certainly, for decades and decades, the Soviet State looked like it would never go anywhere. And you come back from vacation and thereís no more Soviet Union.

The Communist Party, I think, is probably illegalized at this point. Yeltsin is the president, and so thatís kind of where we left off the story. We went a little bit further, we talked about the story of the next decade and the grab for cash, the emergence of the oligarchs and the many who came from the party itself and from the state bureaucracy. And we get to the end of the Ď90s with a fairly established class of now billionaires or becoming billionaires, and a very chaotic state. And Putin becomes the new leader, and thatís sort of where we left off.

The sort of common narrative of this period after Putin becomes leader is that this is the story of the rise of a one- man dictatorship. And this is what the story of this whole next period of the Russian state is. What do you make of that?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: First of all, we do not have, and we didnít have from the very beginning, dictatorship of Putin. In the beginning of his epoch, in the beginning of twenty-first century in our country, we had another style of life. It was continuation of the power of oligarchs with top officials. It was partnership and friendship with the West in the beginning, by the way. Partnership with NATO, partnership with the United States, even later, Putin was main advocate for joining to WTO. In Russia, we had very big opposition.

PAUL JAY: World Trade Organization.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Yeah, World Trade Organization. Majority of Russian, even business people- not majority as far as money was concerned, but in terms of businessmen. Is concerned. So, majority of even business people we against joining to WTO, to World Trade Organization.

PAUL JAY: So, Putin advocated more of an integration with the Western capitalism.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Yeah, Putin advocated, he became- I would say, in the modern sense of this word. Only after crisis, 2007, 2009- before, it was only some elements, some trends, maybe. And about democracy and dictatorship. In that period, we had growth of statism, but mainly in ideology, growth of Russian conservatism, but mainly in ideology, and it was not so strong. It was domination of liberal ideas before crisis, world crisis, 2007-2010. That was the trend. And it was, I want to remind, period when we had enormously high prices on oil and gas. It was up to one hundred fifty dollars per gallon. And Russia had an enormous amount of dollars for really nothing. And it came, it led to the enormous enrichment of oligarchs, but also some resources came to workers in budget sector, education, healthcare, to bureaucracy. It was enormous growth of bureaucracy and a little bit for ordinary workers and peasants.

PAUL JAY: And we talked earlier, in the previous segment, about even most of the oligarchs, as in medieval times, realized there needed to be a king because the competition between the oligarchs would threaten the systems of the oligarchs, and they needed a state to play that kind of role. In terms of Putin and the role of that state, thereís a perception, again, in the West, that it kind of gets used in a way that enhances Putinís power in a sense that he can favor these oligarchs, and disfavor those, and a sense the state becomes more important than the oligarchs.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Itís true and not true. If any oligarch, and billionaire- and in Russia, we have hundreds, more than one hundred owners of more than one billion dollars.

PAUL JAY: More than one hundred billionaires.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Yeah, and the country is not so rich as the United States or China, itís ten times, maybe, not less than ten times- many times less than the United States or China. So, if any from these oligarchs will decide to attack rules of the game or personally, president and his team, he will be in prison or he must immigrate, and so on. But that doesnít mean state became more important than class of oligarchs and top bureaucrats. First of all, it is not even class, it is strata inside class of bourgeoisie. We have very diversified class of bourgeoisie, very different types of bourgeoisie. And inside ruling strata, new nomenklatura is name which Voslenski used for Soviet bureaucrats. And now itís very similar. A few thousand people with families, kids and so on, who are real rulers who concentrate economic and political power.

PAUL JAY: Because they control ministries, regulation-

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Yeah, executive power. They control ruling party, administration of president, and they control main part of wealth of Russia. Seventy percent of Russian wealth is concentrated in the hands of less than one percent of population.

PAUL JAY: We know that number here.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: And key resources in the hands of a few families, one hundred, two hundred families. So, the problem is that they have common interests, but they have clans, like in, I donít know, court of Louis XIV or XV in France, different clans of aristocracy fighting between themselves. But generally speaking, it is one power, one strata of aristocrats who has power. The same in Russia. We have different clans, regional clans, clans that have connected with military-industrial complex, with oil and gas, with small difference between state gas and oil corporations and private gas and oil corporations. But difference is small because top managers of state corporation are also oligarchs. And the private owners of private corporations are in the control of bureaucracy.

So, in Russia, state and private means not too much. Itís not very big difference, unfortunately. And they have common interests. And these common interests led to stagnation of the economy because the development can be realized only if big money from this capital, oligarchic capital, bureaucratic capital, will be used for investments in high-tech technologies. And it will be redistribution of power, not simply of money, but redistribution of power. It will be new, active class. Class of engineers, creators, business people, but business, productive business people, not speculators and those who take land from the oil. And they will lose their power. So, if we have not simply growth, but development, new quality of development, this strata will lose their power.

Thatís why for them, itís not profitable to change economic, social, tendrils of life, of rules of the game, better to say. And for other population, this is stagnation, and stagnation on the low level with very big social differentiation. During last decade, we had more or less the same. After crisis, 2007-2010, it was ten percent decline of production. Then, we had small growth after five years, more or less the same level as 2007, then minus two percent plus one percent, zero plus two percent, near zero. And then finally, after twenty- I will finish on this. After twenty-five years of transformation from so-called inefficient economy of Soviet Russia inside Soviet Union, we have only plus fifteen percent, twenty-five years and only plus fifteen percent.

PAUL JAY: In productivity.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: In production, yeah, gross national product. Less than one percent per year during twenty-five years, all zig zags. And the quality is another.

PAUL JAY: Well, thatís kind of a dramatic number because, given computerization and such, productivity and gross national product in the West has gone far, far higher than that.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: And if you compare with China, which had similar problems, but China had minimum seven percent per year, and an average eight point five.

PAUL JAY: So, what does this mean in terms of the life of working people and what their expectations were? Remember, in an earlier segment you were saying everyone thought, ďGet rid of the Communist Party and socialism,Ē and everyone was going to have ďcapitalism without capitalists,Ē the utopia.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Utopia, unfortunately. So, first of all, as I said, during first years of so-called market reforms, shock without therapy, we had terrible decline of production, incomes, and social differentiation. We received real poverty. And before, it was impossible. And poverty for not only lazy people, liberal dogma, but intelligentsia became extremely poor, workers became extremely poor. After this, high prices on oil, life became a little better. But what we have now- letís move to modern situation. As I said, twenty million people from one hundred fifty, little less, in Russia, are living under the poverty level. And poverty level is ten thousand rubles. Ten thousand rubles is one hundred-

PAUL JAY: Say that again?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Ten thousand rubles is poverty level.

PAUL JAY: And how many people below that?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: We have twenty million people who has less than ten thousand rubles.

PAUL JAY: At this time?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: At this time. And this is continuation. Before, it was sometimes little less, sometimes little worse, but more or less the same. What is ten thousand rubles? It is one hundred sixty dollars per month. Of course, purchasing power of dollar is high, but if you want to buy normal equipment, you will pay even more than in the United States. If you want to buy bread, it will be a little less. So, thatís why it is poverty. Wage of majority of Russians, working Russians, is less than thirty thousand rubles per month. This is five hundred dollars. This is not poverty, but still, country is rich with oil.

PAUL JAY: The majority of people earning that wage.

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: Fifty percent has less than five hundred dollars per month. And in the same time, we have one of the best, second or so place as far number of billionaires is concerned. Billions, not of rubles, but billions of dollars. And they are buying football teams, palaces, two hundred thirty meters long yachts, and so on. It is a country with such situation.

PAUL JAY: So, Putin is the face of this system, whether he has as much power as people think he has or not, heís powerful and the state is powerful. But heís the face of this system. Why, if in fact heís running at seventy percent or so popularity, if thatís true, why?

ALEXANDER BUZGALIN: This is big question.

PAUL JAY: So, weíll talk about why Putin seems to remain so popular in spite of tremendous inequality of the society. So, please join us for the continuation of Reality Asserts Itself with Professor Buzgalin on The Real News Network.

It looks like we could be witnessing a repeat of the vast propaganda system that was triggered and inundated the American and Western public in the lead-up to Iraq. Now that the Syrian proxy war appears to be slowly closing, the usual hawks have set their cross hairs on Tehran.

Nonviolent Civilian-Based Defense (CBD) deploys a powerful coercive force that does not require military action and shifts power away from the elite and into the hands of citizens. Unarmed civilian peacekeeping provides an effective, more sustainable, and potentially transformative alternative to militarized peacekeeping.

At a public event in Washington, DC, CodePinkís Medea Benjamin confronted Brian Hook , the head of Trumpís Iran Action ☠️ Group, over the US withdrawal from the JCPOA and re-imposing crippling ☠️ sanctions on the Iranian people. Benjamin joins us to discuss her action, which went viral online

The U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has been one of the most consequential decisions of the Trump presidency that has faced relatively little public protest. Well, this week was different, when the administration was confronted directly. Brian Hook, the head of Trumpís so-called Iran Action Group, spoke Wednesday at the Hudson Institute, a right-wing think tank in Washington. As Hook finished his remarks, he was joined on stage by Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the peace group Code Pink.

BRIAN HOOK: It is time for all nations to join us in holding Iran to a new level of accountability for its destructive behavior; especially its lawless pursuit of ballistic missiles. Thank you.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: That is the most ridiculous thing I have seen. The world community wants to keep the Iran nuclear deal. Our allies. The Germans, the French, the British, they want to keep in this deal. The world community wants to keep the deal. Letís talk about normal countries. Letís talk about Saudi Arabia. Is that who our allies are? They are the biggest- to the world community. Youíre hurting me. Youíre actually hurting me. I want to ask, do you think these sanctions are hurting the regime, or are they hurting the Iranian people? Theyíre hurting the Iranian people. Youíre making the case for war with Iran. How did the war with Iraq turn out? Youíre doing exactly the same thing we did in the case of Iraq. We donít want another war in the Middle East. How did Iraq turn out? How did Libya turn out? We have the people of Syria suffering. And how dare you bring up the issue of Yemen? Itís the Saudi bombing that is killing most people in Yemen. So letís get real. No more war. Peace with Iran.

AARON MATE: Joining me now is the star of this viral video. Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of the peace group Code Pink. Welcome, Medea. Walk us through what you did here, and the message that you tried to bring.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Well, thanks for having me on, Aaron. You know, itís very hard to sit through the kind of drivel of Brian Hook talking about missile, missile, missile, Iran threat, danger, not a normal country. And my head was spinning, and I felt like I had to get up and respond to it. And I knew that in the Q&A it was going to be curated. They had passed around cards. They werenít going to answer the questions that I had asked. And so I felt I better just get up and say my piece.

And so as you can see, I jumped on stage. And I thought it was so important to counter the path that the Trump administration and Brian Hook and Mike Pompeo are taking us down, because it is so dangerous. And Iím old, Aaron. Iíve been through the antiwar movement around Vietnam, Central America, post-9/11. And I was just sitting there feeling this tremendous deja vu about Iraq; that here was yet another administration doing lies, distortions, inventions, whatever it wanted to paint Iran as a demon that had to be addressed militarily. And you know, weíve got to do something to counter that. We canít allow them to take us into another war in the Middle East or anywhere.

AARON MATE: You got a lot in in just a few minutes of remarks as they were dragging you away. One of the things you said was talking about the impact of sanctions, how the sanctions do not hurt the government of Iran so much as they hurt the people of Iran. And this is a critical point, as especially now already sanctions are back in place with Trump withdrawing from the nuclear deal. But even harsher sanctions from the U.S. are going to be reimposed in November. So can you talk about what you were speaking of in terms of the impact of the U.S. sanctions on Iran?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Yes. Iím in communication with a lot of people in Iran, and hear story after story about how devastating the sanctions already are. And as you said, in early November is the next round of sanctions to try to cut off oil exports from Iran, which is the main source of income, and will be absolutely devastating. And so I thought it was important to bring out the issue that these are ordinary Iranian people who were being hurt by the sanctions.

And the outpouring from Iran that I received after this intervention has been astounding. Yes, there are some people who are extremely nasty and actually doing death threats that I want to report to the FBI, but the majority of them have been really positive and saying how they are their lives are so difficult right now; they canít get married because they donít have money. They donít want to have children because they donít have the money to support them. They lost their jobs because the job situation is very difficult. A doctor who wrote to me and said he canít treat his people, give them the kind of health care they deserve because of shortages.

So this is strangling not the higher-ups, not the clerics, not the government people. This is the strangulating the ordinary Iranian people. And itís designed precisely to do that so theyíll be so angry that theyíll rise up against their government. But I think what is happening is that many people in Iran are becoming united against the outside because of this, instead of focusing on the changes they want to make in their own government. Now they feel they have to hunker down and save themselves against a potential war.

AARON MATE: And you mention that Brian Hook, the head of this new so-called Iran Action Group, was speaking about missiles in Iran. This issue of ballistic missiles. There have been rumblings in the Trump administration they want to try to push through some sort of new agreement with Iran that would limit its ballistic missiles. Can you talk about what is going on there, and what you think the Iranian governmentís reaction to that will be, especially in light of the Trump ministration walking away from the Iran nuclear deal?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: We already know the reaction of the Iranian government, which is to say itís ridiculous to pull out of a deal that was not an agreement between two countries, as Brian Hook said. It was an international agreement approved by the Security Council of the United Nations, by the European Union. If the U.S. pulls out of that itís just crazy to think that the Iranians would sit down and negotiate another deal with the Trump administration. It makes absolutely no sense.

The rest of the world community, minus a couple of countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates, want the deal to be saved. Trying to figure out how to salvage that deal. And we will see a lot of contentious things at the United Nations next week when the issue of Iran comes up, and we find that our allies in Europe are on a very different page than the Trump administration. So I think it is not rational to talk about trying to rein in Iranís missile system when you have just ripped up a nuclear deal. And also to recognize the most sophisticated military technology in the Middle East is not in the government of Iran, itís in the hands of Israel and Saudi Arabia, thanks to the United States.

AARON MATE: Medea, finally, I want to ask you just a personal question. Youíve become notorious for your willingness to confront U.S. officials and former U.S. officials at public events like this one. I remember thereís a famous incident where you were there when Donald Rumsfeld was entering a gathering, and you announced to the crowd, here comes the war criminal. And you stood beside him, denouncing him as a war criminal and speaking a bit about his record. Iím wondering, when you put yourself in this situation, are you ever nervous? Is it scary to go up against people, especially powerful people like your targets?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Itís extremely scary. I donít do this without sweating it out, and really a lot of shaking and questioning whether I should do it or should I do it. But in the end I think itís important to do, and I think more people should do it. I wish there were people everywhere these criminals go to be popping up and denouncing them, because we make their lives way too easy when they are destroying the lives of people around the world.

Agelbert NOTE: These excellent comments tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth that Trump and his Wall Street BACKED 🎩 🍌 War Profiteering 🏴‍ ☠️ Wrecking Crew 👹🦍 (AND MOST of the Democrats too!) refuse to admit.

Quote

PASSINGTHROUGHTOWN41 minutes ago

Hurting us?

No sir, if this "arms deal with the Saudi's" ...

(you know ... those guys who did the WTC false thingy that MURDERED about 3000, innocent, unsuspecting people in a well planned false flag event that essentially GUTTED what George Bush called 'just a goddamned piece of paper' )

... were blocked, I can assure you it would not impact me in the least!

Yes, I can see that the Luciferian MIC, their Israeli partners, and the Saudi's wouldn't like it-- not to mention our ISIS proxy army that has a thing for raping children and mounting their heads on fence posts at the playground where they were kidnapped or burning them alive in cages ... but it would certainly NOT hurt me, or the many, many, common decent people that I happen to know.

But ... that of course ... doesn't matter does it.

And by the way Mr. Trump, just what did those 15 Saudi's have stuffed in their diplomatic suitcases that day they left the Saudi embassy in Turkey?

Totally agree Macroaggression, and I have come to a realization that the Saudi's and the Mossad work hand-in-glove.

Mohammad Atta as I recall was a Saudi who was also working with the Mossad. Mo and his crew had some apartments in Florida as I remember and his next door neighbors were all Mossad agents.

When the embarassing picture emerged in the following weeks the Israelis were asked the obvious questions which they glibly dismissed as something like ... "oh ... yeah ... uhhhhh ... we were investigating Atta regarding .... uhhhhh ... a possible .... uhhhhhh .... terrorist attack on US soil."

Back in those days and before, I was a staunch Israeli supporter.

I didn't know what a zionist was exactly, but I would have stupidily raised my hand as one if I had been asked.

NO MORE!

My eyes were wide shut and I didn't realise it then. George Bush's comment opened my eyes wide open and when I saw those Israelis (Mossad agents) in the white van cheering, that did it for me.

I knew people in those buildings and they were better human beings than anyone running the Israeli government, the House of Saud, or Washington D.C. in my opinion.

PETER PAN36 minutes ago

"doing probably better economically than it's ever done before"?

At least Skripal is alive. Imagine if he was dead.

All governments are hypocrites. It's just the degree that varies.

HKAN37 minutes ago

Trump 👹 visiting KKK?

JOGGERNAUT X240 minutes ago

Trump is just looking out for his BFFs, the Saudis

NIGGAPLEEZE47 minutes ago

Yeah, not selling bombs to the Saudi Barbarians to bomb children with in Yemen would "hurt us".

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. resident who wrote for the Washington Post, was just apparently killed on the eve of his wedding ó and news reports suggest that the Saudi government was responsible.

We are heartbroken. But we are not surprised.

The Saudi government has a long history of cracking down on dissidents and murdering civilians. Meanwhile, U.S. news outlets have consistently propped up the image of Saudi Arabiaís crown prince as a reformer, giving him a free pass to continue executing activists, bombing Yemeni children in school buses, and using starvation as weapon of war in Yemen.The New York Times and The Economist just announced they are pulling out of the Saudi governmentís upcoming high-powered investment conference in the wake of Khashoggiís apparent murder. This could be a watershed moment.

Weíve got to jump on this momentum and demand other U.S. media companies also stop legitimizing Saudi government repression and back out of this conference. Add your name now >>

BREAKING: All companies but Fox Business have pulled out. Fox must follow suit!The man who reportedly masterminded Khashoggiís death is Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. This isnít his first violent repression of critics. U.S. news outlets hailed bin Salman as a progressive reformer when he lifted Saudi Arabiaís ban on women driving ó but stayed silent about his brutal crackdown on womenís rights activists, including his attempts to use the death penalty against feminist activist Israa al-Ghomgham.

Mohammed bin Salman is also the chief architect of the bloody, brutal, U.S.-backed war in Yemen. Bombing campaigns targeting hospitals, school buses, and weddings that have killed thousands of Yemenis. Deliberately starving millions more. Blocking access to medicine amid the worldís worst recorded cholera epidemic.These murders are on bin Salmanís hands too.

U.S. support of Saudi Arabia has made the war in Yemen possible. And mainstream mediaís refusal to sound the alarm has sealed the deal.

Thatís why this is SUCH a huge moment. Influential U.S. media outlets like the New York Times and The Economist are drawing a line and refusing to legitimize Saudi government repression any longer.

If we can get the other media companies sponsoring the Saudi governmentís fancy, feel-good conference to turn their backs, we will send a powerful signal that upends the United Statesí unquestioning support of Saudi Arabia and jams the door wide open to ending the Saudi-led war in Yemen for good.

Will the Disappearance of Journalist Jamal Khashoggi Bring Down the US-Saudi Alliance?

October 12, 2018

Journalist James M. Dorsey says Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) has suffered significant reputational damage on the eve of a major global trade conference known as Vision 2030 or ďDavos in the DesertĒ

President Trump says the US is pressing Saudi Arabia for answers on the fate of missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But new questions are being raised about the US role after a Washington Post report that U.S. intelligence intercepted communications of Saudi officials discussing a plan to capture and ďlay hands onĒ Khashoggi. We speak to Ali Al-Ahmed, founder and director of The Institute for Gulf Affairs

President Trump says the U.S. is pressing Saudi Arabia for answers on the fate of missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

DONALD TRUMP: This is a bad situation. We cannot let this happen to reporters, to anybody. We canít let this happen. And weíre going to get to the bottom of it, OK? You may want to speak to the First Ladyís office about [inaudible]. Iíd rather not say. But in a very high level. The highest level. Letís say- let me say this. Itís the highest level.

AARON MATE: Khashoggi entered the Saudi embassy in Turkey last Tuesday to obtain a document he needed to get married. He has not been seen since. Turkish officials say they believe he was killed by a team of 15 Saudis- a hit squad, they say, who flew into Turkey for that purpose. According to the New York Times, Turkey believes one team member brought a bone saw to dismember Khashoggiís body after killing him. Saudi Arabia has denied any involvement in Khashoggiís disappearance, but it has not provided any evidence that shows where else Khashoggi might be.

And although the White House now claims to be demanding answers, new questions are being raised about the U.S. role. The Washington Post reports, ďbefore Khashoggiís disappearance, U.S. intelligence intercepted communications of Saudi officials discussing a plan to capture him. The Saudis wanted to lure Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia and lay hands on him there.Ē In Washington today a group of supporters gathered to demand answers on Khashoggiís disappearance. Among the speakers was Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: I knew Jamal, and actually was critical of him for not being more critical of the Saudi government. We had some very wonderful exchanges. And my heart goes out to his family and everybody who knew and loved him. Of course we want to believe heís still alive, but I donít believe it. I believe that he is dead. And you know why? Because I know what the Saudi government is capable of. And I want to denounce the Western democracies for their hypocrisy and their enabling of Saudi behavior for so many years now.

AARON MATE: Joining me is Ali Al-Ahmed, founder and director of Institute for Gulf Affairs. Welcome, Ali. First, let me ask you if you could speculate, what is your sense of the fate of Jamal Khashoggi right now? Do you think he is still alive? Or do you think the Saudis have indeed killed him?

ALI AL-AHMED: Until this morning the messages Iíve been getting are that he was alive. But today, and by the end of the day, we have- Iíve heard people have, they have seen a video of him being killed. That video was taken by his Apple watch. And that streamed to his iPhone, which was outside the consulate at the hand of his wife, and the Turkish authorities were able to go unlock the phone and then see the video. The gruesome video. So we have confirmation from people who said they were shown the video by the Turkish police. So [inaudible]

AARON MATE: Ali, this is a, this is a very explosive claim. Youíve spoken to people who say that they have seen video that was beamed from his watch showing his murder? Who are these people youíve spoken to?

ALI AL-AHMED: This is an editor of Turkish government TV. I have his recorded statement that this is what happened, and that this is confirmation that Khashoggi has been killed. And it shows the actual murder. And it would be [inaudible].

AARON MATE: And you spoke to this editor personally?

ALI AL-AHMED: No, I didnít speak to this editor personally, but I have his recording. I know that the recording came; he sent it to a group of friends that I am- and one of them sent it to me. So he knows one of my friends who- he sent the broadcast to his friends, and we have a common friend who sent it to me. And I have it in my phone. I would be happy to send it to you. You can check with him, he has a Twitter account.

AARON MATE: OK. Well, until we get confirmation from Turkish authorities, and Saudi Arabia, obviously itís best to-

ALI AL-AHMED: This is government, government television. This is Arabic TRT station.

ALI AL-AHMED: Itís not a report, yeah. This is, like I said, this by director of Turkish, Arabic TV. And he sent it to his friends. One of them [inaudible] is a friend of mine who sent it to me. And I have it. Iíll be happy to send it to you, and you can talk to the gentleman himself and authenticate it.

AARON MATE: OK. So as we await confirmation, public confirmation, from the Turkish government, letís just talk about what is going on here. No matter what happened to Jamal Khashoggi, why do you think he was targeted? He was- some people call him a critic of the Saudi government, or a dissident. But thatís not quite accurate. He actually was close to the Saudi royal family, worked for them. He expressed some concerns about freedom of expression in Saudi Arabia. But he was not a harsh critic of the regime, as I understand it. Can you talk about who he- what he did, and why do you think the Saudi government came after him?

ALI AL-AHMED: He- Jamal Khashoggi has been always a loyalist until he came back, he came, ran away and fled to the United States. So he was a loyalist. And even after he left he was speaking on TV and saying that his allegiance is to King Salman. But he was critical of the conditions that Mohammed bin Salman, the son, the Crown Prince, was making the country go through. So heís a loyalist, and heís a man who made his career being a loyalist to the Saudi monarchy. So his career was built on that. He was advisor, he supported- he was a diplomat in Washington, and in London. He worked with the Saudi intelligence in the í80s in organizing and recruiting fighters against the Soviet Union at the time. So he has a long history of loyalty.

That is actually exactly what made it worse for him, because the Saudi monarchy does not accept anything but absolute loyalty, without any shred of hesitation. And because he kind of departed from that- heís loyal to the King. You know, maybe sometimes in a very awful way, to be honest, because he spoke about what he called a, I have an allegiance, a loyalty to the King, but then he criticized his son for his behavior and policies. Because at this time we are not slaves and masters anymore, so that, that term is kind of abhorrent to me.

Anyway, so because he is from within the ranks of the monarchy, or their proxies, it was important for the Saudi government to send a message to their followers, to their loyalists, that you cannot emulate Khashoggi, you cannot break with us and turn your back against us, because we will punish you harshly. And that is exactly, I think, the plan. The message was clear. There is no need to send 15 people to kill one man. One man could have done it. And you know, even getting rid of the body theyíll need a lot of help. But this was a message. This is executing your opponent in the street so that the population are scared. Exactly. This is what they are doing here. Again, he was not a dissident. He was actually critical of dissidents much more than he was critical of the government. And he was sometimes hostile to dissidents, including myself. But that does not excuse his execution or kidnapping. It is unfortunate, [especially for his family].

AARON MATE: Letís talk about the message that the U.S. is sending here. So you have this report now in the Washington Post claiming that U.S. intelligence intercepted Saudi Arabian officials talking about a plan to lure him back to Saudi Arabia and lay their hands on him, as the Post says there. Does not seem- thereís no indication that Khashoggi was warned about this by U.S. officials. And then after his disappearance you have initially a very muted response from the White House. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put out a call for the Saudis to investigate it. Sort of a mild call for the alleged kidnappers to investigate their own kidnapping. You had Trump today saying that heís speaking to Saudi Arabia officials at the highest levels. What do you make of the Trump administrationís response so far?

ALI AL-AHMED: Iím actually surprised that this is- Iíve been here long enough to see this before. This is the highest and the strongest reaction to incidents or crimes committed by the Saudi government ever. And so, and that, when it comes to comparison, this is the, the most widespread from the administration, and from Congress and the media, obviously. Previous violations did not- although they are much more abhorrent, they did not receive such attention under the Obama or the Bush administration. Just look at the war in Yemen a few weeks ago, last month when the Saudis bombed deliberately this bus, 40 Yemeni children. The U.S. administration actually sided with Saudi Arabia, and did not have- so this is a stronger reaction.

And I think there is something here. I have no idea what it is. It has, maybe it has to do with the fact that Mr. Trump is saying you have to pay, you have to pay to the Saudi king. And this may be yet another way of pushing the Saudis- it might not be a genuine escalation on Saudi Arabia to truly improve human rights. After all, the United States has been supporting and protecting the Saudi monarchy for nearly 60 years, and it has ignored totally the violation of human rights, including religious freedom for even Americans in Saudi Arabia; and woman driving, the last country in the world. And the lack of cinemas, and basic freedom, and so on.

So this is, I think it is, it has been the strongest reaction. I know some people donít see it that way, but thatís the reality.

AARON MATE: Ali, let me go to that clip you mentioned of Trump speaking about the Saudi king. He said this last week at a rally.

DONALD TRUMP: Protect Saudi Arabia. Would you say theyíre rich? And I love the king, King Salman. But I said, King, weíre protecting you. You might not be there for two weeks without us. You have to pay for your military.

AARON MATE: Thatís President Trump speaking at a recent rally. So Ali, finally, there is talk now of this incident marking a change in U.S.-Saudi relations. Do you think, if it is officially confirmed that Jamal Khashoggi has been killed, do you think that that change will happen?

ALI AL-AHMED: I doubt it. I hope so, but I doubt it. I donít think it will happen. Because I think the relationship is dependent on maintaining domination🦕 of the country and its resources by the United States🦖. If Mohammed bin Salman is starting to grow his own wings and refusing to pay, as Mr. Trump put it, maybe then they would be extremely increasing pressure. Letís remember, the U.S. government overthrew elected secular liberal democrats in Iran in 1953. So this is nothing new. So itís not about how you treat your people. Itís how good you treat the American regime; what are you, how much you are willing to pay, and spend your money buying weapons, or conducting or supporting U.S. policies in the region. That has been the factor that the U.S. has used to evaluate its allies and foes in the region.

AARON MATE: All right. So weíll leave it there. I just want to go back to what Ali said at the beginning of this interview, this claim that there is Apple watch footage of the killing. Again, nothing is confirmed yet publicly from the Turkish authorities, so we need to be cautious. There is a report on the Middle East Eye that cites a Turkish source, saying that Turkish police have audio and video evidence of the killing. But it does not name the source or identify what is the nature of that supposed audio and video evidence. And it also- the Middle East Eye also makes reference to Turkish police looking at the Apple watch worn by Khashoggi being synced to his wifeís phone. So we will await confirmation, again, from the Turkish police on the outcome of their investigation, and whether or not these reports of there being audio and video evidence being correct.

My guest has been Ali Al-Ahmed. He is the founder and director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs. Iím Aaron Mate for The Real News.

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